Policy recommendations

5.1 Introduction

Our task in this study was to provide recommendations about the possible scenarios for a large scale roll out of virtual research organisations, and novel services for students based on CSCL environments. We followed a social shaping of technology (SST)

approach, which has proven its value in a number of science and technology studies. Our recommendations are informed not only by the survey and case studies undertaken for this project but also by our other work (Procter, 2007; Voss et al., 2007) and the related literature. We consider these recommendations as somewhat complementary to recommendations and proposals that have been made by others, in particular the following:

1) The ESFRI Roadmap report (2006) sets out to describe the scientific needs for Research Infrastructures of pan-European interest for the next 10-20 years, taking into account input from relevant inter-governmental research organisations as well as the industrial community. ESFRI’s agenda is necessarily concerned with the formulation of strategic, policy-level recommendations and contrasts with the focus of the AVROSS project which has been to identify how e-Infrastructure development and adoption are perceived at the ‘grass roots’. Nevertheless, we find several examples of where the two connect. The ESFRI Roadmap identifies three long-term strategic goals for SSH research infrastructures (comparative data and modelling, data integration and language tools, coordination and enabling) and a number of individual, pan-European infrastructural projects critical for the realisation of these goals (ESS, SHARE, CESSDA, EROHS, CLARIN and DARIAH).

2) The e-Infrastructures Roadmap from e-IRG has the purpose of outlining the necessary steps Europe should take in regard to e-Infrastructures in the next twenty years

(Leenaars, et al., 2005). Coming from a computer science and engineering perspective, the Roadmap includes several recommendations on networking infrastructures,

middleware and organisation, resources, and crossing the boundaries of science. These can contribute to building a European infrastructure for e-Research.

3) The NSF Workshop on Cyberinfrastructure and the Social Sciences focused on identifying the social, behavioural, and economic sciences’ needs for e-infrastructure/ cyberinfrastructure, their potential for helping in the development of this infrastructure, and their capacity for assessing its societal impacts (Berman & Brady, 2005). Its

recommendations address first what infrastructures are desirable from the perspective of the latter fields; second it suggests certain topics where social science research will be beneficial for e-Infrastructure development in general; third it stresses the needs for sustainable funding schemes; last but not least the document highlights the necessity to develop the e-Social Science community.

The recommendations set out in this report should be viewed as complementary and summarising lessons learnt in e-Infrastructure projects to-date which should be absorbed and acted on as new projects, funded by ESFRI, EC, NSF and others, get under way. In our empirical work we identified numerous issues that will be critical to developing and disseminating e-Infrastructures for social scientists and humanists. Any roll out that requires domain scientists to take up a new approach has several separate components that each independently need to be successful. These include:

1. Capacity building for e-Infrastructures in the social sciences and humanities: the base of motivated scientists and skilled technicians trained on e-Infrastructures needs to be broadened through education and training – with an important role for CSCL – and funding needs both, to take the specific demands of SSH into account and to move on to sustainable funding schemes.

139 users are familiar with tools which “only” have been ported on the grid environment; standardisation raises the confidence in sustainability.

3. Fostering the adoption of the approach by domain scientists: Incentives need to be given and barriers that hinder adoption need to be reduced. Such incentives should be instituted in funding schemes – e.g. to reuse existing data and make new data available through repositories – and become part of SSH research and academic practice, for instance in publishing, evaluation, and promotion. Barriers require at least as often organizational solutions as they require technical

solutions, for instance when it comes to reducing the language barriers between technical developers and domain scientists.

4. Making domain scientists aware of e-Infrastructures: Awareness needs to be raised above all through demonstrating the benefits of e-Infrastructures. This is most effectively done through field-specific information channels and between peers. Institutional environments, of course, need also be responsive to the pay- offs of e-Infrastructure investments. Last but not least, the knowledge on what type of infrastructure and support SSH researchers actually need and where they stand in the adoption process needs to be broadened (also raising awareness in the process of doing so).

Figure 5.1 provides a visualisation of this sequence.

Figure 5.1: The components of a roll out of e-Infrastructures in social sciences and humanities Raising Awareness Capacity Building Tool Development Adoption The Components of a Roll Out

Source: AVROSS

Previous research has also made it clear that successful infrastructures are a

combination of ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ processes, implying they cannot be planned in any complete sense (e.g., Edwards et al., 2007). They succeed because a stable socio- technical constituency – an ensemble of technical components (hardware, software, etc.) and stakeholders (people, interest groups, visions, values, etc.) – emerges. Socio- technical constituencies stabilise when stakeholders are able to strike a balance between their interests and those of the wider community. We also note that each cycle of

innovation is disruptive, there are winners and losers as previously stable and successful socio-technical constituencies unravel (Procter, 2007). We believe that the following recommendations will improve the chances for success at each step of the process described in Figure 5.1.

Capacity Building Tool development Adoption Raising awareness 1. Develop dedicated

training events for SSH

2. Step up the role of e-Infrastructure in graduate education 3. Increase the use of CSCL environments 4. Support small- scale initiatives 5. Design effective funding and pro- gramme coordination structures 6. Fund field-specific flanking measures in general, multi-dis- ciplinary e-Infrastruc- ture programmes 7. Support the development of service-oriented business models

8. Involve users at all stages 9. Mandate user- centred design 10. Port existing SSH tools to e- Infrastructures 11. Target vertical areas to ensure tool adoption across sub- fields

12. Support standardisation

13. Institute activities to promote the reuse of SSH data

14. Assign scientific credit and ownership rights 15. Reduce technical barriers through providing organi- zational solutions 16. Promote under- standing of SSH among IT specialists 17. Improve cross- disciplinary communi- cation and collaboration 18. Create supportive institutional environ- ments 19. Increase user- user interaction 20. Increase the information exchange across projects 21. Involve lead users in community-building 22. Institute an ongoing analysis of computational needs and resources in European SSH 23. Institute an ongoing evaluation program with scientific analysis of adopters and non adopters

Source: AVROSS.

5.2 Capacity building

5.2.1 Broaden the base of scientists and technicians trained on e-Infrastructures

The typical e-Social Science project has a staff of about 14 individuals, of whom 5 are scientists, 3 are graduate students and 6 are other, technical, administrative and supporting staff (see section 3.3.2). Projects need not be large, but they need a dedicated and motivated staff with a range of competencies. The importance of

leadership, of being able to bridge the differences between computer science and domain sciences through multidisciplinary individuals or teams, and the necessity of being patient to allow for training and capacity-building of scientists were stressed by the researched projects. It is also shown in our survey and case studies that individual scientists or teams carrying out such projects must have deep understanding of SSH research issues and methods, i.e. teams must involve qualified scientists from these disciplines (see p. 41). All in all, these results point to the key role of capacity-building for working

successfully with e-Infrastructures.

This is not an entirely new issue and it reaches beyond SSH. Two years ago the e-IRG proposed to increase efforts in the training of scientists and computer support personnel on working with grid environments (Leenaars, et al., 2005) and set up an Education and Training Task Force (http://www.e-irg.org/about/ETTF/). The Open Grid Forum also instituted an Education and Training working group (ET-WG) which postulates:

“Education must change, so that graduates of our educational systems are well equipped with fundamentals to understand how and when to take advantage of the new methods enabled by grid computing whatever their

141 This is in line with US and UK scientists’ substantial concern about sufficient numbers of trained individuals for the full exploitation and maintenance of e-Social Science

investments.29 However, these initiatives still have to produce results and obviously more needs to be done.